Kevin Allerston
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (June 06/05) - Yellowknifers awoke Saturday morning to a plume of black smoke casting a shadow and the smell of burning garbage over the city.

The thick black cloud drifted over Range Lake North as tires and bales of compact trash burned at the city's dump.

Fire crews arrived on scene around 6 a.m., and worked all morning to bring the blazing garbage under control.

They managed to keep the fire from spreading to other sections of the land-fill and soaked the immediate area to reduce the threat of re-ignition.

After monitoring all night, city officials re-opened the dump Sunday morning.

The firefighter's job was made easier thanks to some help from the public, including Volker Stevin Contracting Ltd., which brought in dirt to make a fire break, and the airport, which sent out its own water truck to douse the flames.

"So a fire like this could have been a lot worse without the quick help of a lot of different agencies," public works director Greg Kehoe said.

"They were able to make fire breaks and contain the fire. Had they not been able to... That landfill has been in operation for 30 years and if the entire dump would have caught on fire, it would have been disastrous."

Since there are no hydrants in the area, fire crews brought water in with three tanker trucks <> two from public works and one from the firehall.

"It works quite well. We are used to this. There are a couple of areas in town that are not on water supply and this is an easy operation for us, to bring water in," said deputy fire chief Darcy Hernblad.

While the black plume was unsightly, the chief said residents shouldn't worry about the smoke.

"Well, smoke always causes a danger to public, but the wind was blowing, it was taking it up high. I don't think there was any immediate danger to anybody in the city," Hernblad said.

The fire department is investigating the cause of the fire and as of press time there was no word on whether it was suspicious or not.

Nobody was hurt in the incident.